David Warren and Janie C. Lee at the Hotel ZaZa Friday April 11,2008. (Dave Rossman/For the Chronicle)

David Warren and Janie C. Lee at the Hotel ZaZa Friday April 11,2008. (Dave Rossman/For the Chronicle)

Photo: Dave Rossman, Freelance

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Louisa Stude Sarofim, in blue and white, and Janie C. Lee, in black, were front and center during last year's groundbreaking for the Menil Drawing Institute.

Louisa Stude Sarofim, in blue and white, and Janie C. Lee, in black, were front and center during last year's groundbreaking for the Menil Drawing Institute.

Photo: David Brown, Principle

Sarofim, Lee gift 110 seminal drawings from their collections to the Menil

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Louisa Stude Sarofim and Janie C. Lee appreciated the value of drawing decades before most people considered that kind of work integral to an artist's creative process - much less a medium worthy of its own museum.

For 40 years, the longtime friends have filled the walls of their respective homes with drawings by the megastars of modern and contemporary art, amassing collections worth millions of dollars.

Sarofim and Lee shared their passion for drawing with Menil Collection founder Dominique de Menil, and on Thursday they announced a gift to her institution that de Menil would have appreciated: a total of 110 seminal drawings from their independent collections. Each has committed 55 drawings - an unusual two-part gift that constitutes one of the largest donations in the museum's history.

This timely gesture illustrates a colorful history of relationships, friendships and a common love for a singular institution, coming as the long-awaited Menil Drawing Institute rises on the organization's Montrose campus.

Lifetime trustee Sarofim, 80, is the Menil Foundation board chair, hand-picked by de Menil. Lee, 79, has been a trustee since 2004, when she returned to Houston to help get the drawing institute project off the ground.

Institute to open in 2017

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Sarofim and Lee chose works that will complement the Menil's current collection of 17,000 works and build future trajectories for study.

"In the initial days, we never thought about putting them in one place," Lee said. "They didn't have a purpose other than enjoyment. Now they have a purpose, so others can learn about them and appreciate them."

Some of the works, however, will be loaned and displayed as early as next year. Chief curator David Breslin said the Sarofim and Lee collections will form the core of his first exhibition at the Menil Drawing Institute when the landmark facility - the first free-standing building dedicated to works on paper - opens in September 2017.

The gift encompasses works by 41 artists, dating from the late 19th century to the present, including drawings by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. Breslin is especially excited to add 15 works by Jasper Johns that will make the Menil the most significant public repository of the 86-year old artist's drawings.

No museum can acquire such treasures on its own anymore, Breslin said.

"In some ways, it's a market thing. These drawings are rare and hard to find. Or they're outside the reach of museums that have set acquisition budgets," he said.

Breslin declined to reveal the monetary value of the donations but said their art historical value is substantial, "and their other value is as robust."

Drawings in drawers

Just about anything made by an artist today - including conceptual sculpture and video - can be labeled a drawing. But Sarofim and Lee invested in the old-fashioned kind, on paper.

"When we began this, drawings were sitting in drawers," Sarofim said.

An heiress to the Brown and Root fortune, Sarofim was exposed to art early, but she didn't collect drawings until she met Lee, an art dealer, in the 1970s.

"I had no space in my quarters to hang paintings of any size," said Sarofim, who was busy raising two children with her then-husband, billionaire Fayez Sarofim. Drawings, however, gave her a focus.

Lee, a member of the Glassell family, owned a namesake gallery for almost 30 years and also had a New York gallery dedicated to drawings. She collected drawings most actively from the 1960s to the 1980s - just ahead of the international curve.

Both women consider arts patronage as much of a civic duty as paying taxes.

During her seven years as a curator of drawings for the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lee worked with artists including Johns, Brice Marden, Claes Oldenburg, Arshile Gorky and others who helped her understand what drawing meant to their creative process. Their approach differed from previous centuries' Old Masters, who drew preparatory sketches.

"Drawings were often considered secondary to paintings and sculpture," Lee said. "Then, about 20 years ago, somebody realized they were independent, and enthusiasm grew."

With Sarofim and the late trustee David Whitney, Lee floated the idea of a drawing institute not long before de Menil died 19 years ago.

Their concept remained just "chatter" until Whitney died in 2005 and bequeathed his collection. The Menil Foundation board established the institute in 2008.

Sarofim said she has bought drawings more intentionally since then. Her earlier gifts to the Menil include Ellsworth Kelly's "Tablet," a suite of 188 framed works on paper made from 1948 to 1973, given in 2003.

She wants people to understand the seriousness of the drawing institute, worldwide.

"It's not just another building," Sarofim said.

"The scholarly study that will be done there is as important as the exhibitions."